In an interview last year, the Portuguese Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago was asked about his daily writing routine. His answer was, "I write two pages. And then I read and read and read."

Saramago didn't say how long it took him to write those two pages, but he did emphasise the reading part of his routine and it made me wonder: do most writers devote more time to reading? Or do they write more than they read?

In today's world, unless a person is serious about writing and dedicated to reading it can be difficult to find the time to do either. People today have many commitments and the world offers many distractions.

Once a commitment to writing is made it can be a long time before a person starts writing anything of quality and, as a consequence, young writers often spend years escaping into other people's fiction in lieu of writing themselves. Then, magically, they might develop a talent for expressing their ideas in language; their ideas might not be any good, but the practice of constructing sentences around those ideas becomes far less painful. At this point, a writer might start writing more and more each day, and reading a little less.

I was talking about this recently with the American novelist Elise Blackwell. She said, "I think heavier reading is essential for young writers, but, like you, I moved into more writing than reading. The balance of my reading and writing shifts across the year, and I suspect I'd read four hours a day if I didn't have a day job. In the summer, when I'm not teaching, my reading and writing very nearly even out at four and four. When I'm teaching though, both are reduced – the reading by a much larger amount. The pattern also varies by where I am in writing a novel. I tend to read very little when combing the final draft and of course much more right after I've finished."

Last week the Guardian published a list of writerly rules donated by respected authors. Somewhat surprisingly, only a quarter of the authors advised aspiring writers to read. Perhaps reading is too obvious, too fundamental to be perceived as a rule – like advising chefs to eat if they want to learn how to cook. But despite the fact that most of the rule writers failed to advise people to read, I doubt any writer would argue that reading is not essential to the writing craft. What, then, are the general benefits of reading books if you are a writer?

Most obviously, reading improves a writer's active vocabulary. A good novel is like a dictionary and a thesaurus, cleverly adapted to be compelling as well as instructive. You can read the dictionary and write down all the words you like (I did once), but it isn't the most riveting book.

As well as a large vocabulary, novels give writers a sense of how it is done. They offer templates that can be borrowed and adapted; they teach a writer how to create narrative structures and characters, how to develop tension, write dialogue, and maintain a consistent tone and pitch. Novels also trigger memories from a reader's personal experience, and these give writers ideas for their own stories. Great writers can copy just about anything they read and make it look original: a scene from one book, the description of a room from another, a piece of dialogue, an item of clothing, all of these details can remind writers of events and experiences in their own life, they can trigger a writer's imagination in ways that are distinct from the original, if not unique in the world.

Even without personal experience as a guide, a great novel can offer writers inspiration. Conrad's novel Nostromo was set in South America more than 100 years ago, and yet it could easily inspire a modern author to write a contemporary tale about the demise of a proud police officer whose greatest treasure was his reputation. This practice is called "copying from the masters", as Michael Moorcock acknowledged last week: "Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters."

Finally, whenever writing gets too painful, when each word and idea seems to be dragged from the mind like the limb of an aborted camel, reading offers a writer a lovely escape into a fantasy world where stories are revealed with simple ease and order on the page. Writing is often hell, but reading is almost always a pleasure if you are discerning.